last week i volunteered at the planned parenthood annual luncheon so i could hear cecile richards speak. she says portland is the city that shows the rest of the country what's possible: we're building new clinics in more rural areas of oregon, we've defeated a parental notification bill (twice!), we offer birth control & emergency contraception online, we just passed a bill that requires insurers to cover birth control if they cover other prescriptions, and we offer free hpv vaccinations for people under 18. that's really good, especially compared to some states (i'm looking at you, colorado, with your spousal consent law!).

of course, all is not well. we still don't have a law requiring pharmacists to dispense legal medication like birth control or emergency contraception, we have protesters at the mlk site, and there were protesters at this event, too. last year we didn't have any, and this year we had 3 with signs and the giant van circling the block with pictures of bloody fetuses pasted on it. nationally, sex education is still largely abstinence-based and this year the supreme court denied a medical procedure ostensibly to protect women from something they might potentially regret. globally, federal aid is still contingent on the "gag rule": not mentioning contraception or abortion options to people who very much need it.

and then there's this: men who claim they've had abortions. to be clear, men cannot have abortions because men cannot be pregnant. "post-abortion traumatic syndrome" is completely fabricated: yes, some people do feel regret, but that's true for plastic surgery, buying a home and getting a puppy, and nobody's banning those things. this general "abortion hurts women (and menz!)" movement drives me mad because the supposed solution is to ban abortions rather than changing the circumstances and climate surrounding abortion. these are the same people who are making abortion "traumatic" in the first place! If you don't want the trauma, STOP MAKING IT TRAUMATIC!

Comments:

It's ironic, isn't it -- if men can claim that they had abortions, what happens to the old feminist slogan, "If men could have abortions, abortions would be a sacrament"?

We live in a silly society. Somebody needs to get on with their lives, methinks.

i look at abortion as a sort of "shylock scenario": you can't separate a pregnancy from a woman any more than you can take the pound of flesh without the blood. if the baby is born you can argue about it all you want, but before then, the decision is hers.

and yes, i totally want to tell the men in that story to get on with their lives and stop trying to interfere with mine. :)